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Thoughts from the Publisher
Issue: 7.3 (March/April 2009)
Author: Marc Zeedar
Author Bio: When RBD publisher Marc Zeedar was a kid he used to create magazines just for fun. Now he's doing it for a living! You may contact him at
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Article Number: 7300
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I'd hope to write in this issue about some new things coming down the pike for REALbasic Developer, but alas, things are not quite ready for an official announcement yet. But trust me: we've got some new products coming, as well as some other changes I hope you'll find helpful and exciting.
Nose to the Grindstone
I will admit that over the past few years I haven't been doing as much programming as I wanted or needed. I've done small projects, utilities to help out with things here at
RBD and in my other work, but I haven't been working on large commercial releases for a long time. (My Z-Write software has been stuck in beta status forever.) There were many reasons for this:RBD has been my priority, I was concentrating on my health for a while there, and no doubt some good old-fashioned laziness. When you're doing as many things as I am, it's easy to get out of the habit of programming, and that's not a good thing.Fortunately, that has changed, as I've been programming a lot lately. (I'm hoping to release a new Z-Write shortly.) The good news for
RBD fans is my experiences are firing me up with ideas for articles. I'm learning so much updating my old code, cross-compiling for Windows, and remembering how complicated releasing software can be.Usually I get inspired in the spring by the annual REALWorld conference, but sadly this year the conference has been cancelled due to the global financial crisis. (Like you, I sure hope it will return in 2010.)
In the meantime, I'm excited about writing software again. It gives me such a high I don't know why I ever stopped. (Oh yeah, it's a lot of hard work. Now I remember.)
But it is rewarding. I know many of you find programming frustrating at times (I know I do during a painful debugging session), so hopefully
RBD can be a point of inspiration for you. I want the magazine to not just be a source of information, but motivation. If you have any thoughts or suggestions for me in that regard, please let me know!In This Issue
Some of our regular columnists are taking a leave of absence, but we hope they'll be back soon. In the meantime, we still have plenty of content, with some new feature articles I hope you'll find valuable.
First up is a terrific Postmortem from Will Phillips, who writes about creating his TickerMenu application for Mac OS X. Will had so much to say we split this into two parts (part two will appear in the May/June issue)!
Next, JC Cruz is back with a "REALGraphics" feature on how to create filters for photographs. It's a fascinating look at how applications like Photoshop transform your pictures, and best of all, JC provides code so you can do the same things yourself in REALbasic!
We've got a couple new authors in this issue. Craig Boyd steps up with a detailed look at "data models." He explains what they are, how to read them, and why they are useful.
Finally, Tom Baumgartner explains how to work with REALbasic's virtually unpublicized "virtual volumes" feature. Just last week a reader emailed me asking how to embed text and graphics in the same file: well, virtual volumes is one way to do just that!
Enjoy!
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